Mercury News editorial: GOP should at least allow a vote on guns

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell holds a news conference with fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill in Washington April 9, 2013. Senate Republican leader McConnell’s re-election campaign said on Tuesday it has asked the FBI to investigate how a campaign strategy meeting was recorded in which ways to attack a potential rival, actress Ashley Judd, were reportedly discussed. REUTERS/Gary Cameron

“What’s more important? Our children or an ‘A’ grade from the gun lobby?” President Barack Obama mused Monday in Hartford, and he quickly got his answer: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that he’d join the filibuster to keep Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid’s gun regulation bill from coming to a vote.

Think about it. This isn’t just rejecting new regulation. It’s about preventing even a vote on it — keeping Americans from seeing which of our senators, Democrat and Republican, hold that “A” from the National Rifle Association more sacred than the lives of our children, of domestic violence victims and others who die because violent people have guns handy.

You’d think, from this, that gun regulation is massively unpopular. In fact some proposals, like requiring background checks for all gun purchases to weed out felons and other dangerous individuals, are popular even among NRA members. The terror McConnell and his ilk feel is not of voters’ wrath but of displeasing the gun industry campaign cash dispensers.

And by the way, Sen. Reid, how’s that good-faith compromise on filibuster rules workin’ out for ya? Is the Senate functioning better? No? Didn’t think so.

Until voters develop a lobby as strong as the NRA, the sensible gun regulation that Americans want will be blocked by the cowards on Capitol Hill.